Xeno Mutator discussion

[RuAlastor]

How is getting a shitty version of a caste ability gonna make an ultimate xeno?

Prae is strong as fuck but replacing 1 mutator with another isnt gonna magically make him stronger just gonna make him different.

yes, how upgrading an ability, can make him stronger?
just IMO. making a xeno, that can do stuff of other caste is bad. just like giving medic an ability to perform surgeries (but badly)

[Weaselburg]

Dang, so many changes since my time. It was much simpler back before the tank, not sure if it was better though.

[LubedDwarf]

Frankly, the mutator nerf doesn't fix my main problem with this. The mutators are just boring and now they're even more boring since you can't specialize anymore(like putting all your mutator points into health). You put mutation points in the same thing every round except if you're a spitting caste-Armor, Health, Speed, and Damage.

[Simo94]

''You can now buy each mutator only once.'', this right here killed the spirit of mutators, the choice is gone and there is no point anymore, just stick a mutator to each xeno upgrade and call it a day.

a better solution IMO is making mutator stacking scale down, the more you buy of the same thing, the less stats it gives you, like if I buy damage three times, I get 100% of the boost the first time, but only 75% the 2nd, and 50% only the 3rd time, some mutators would scale down more than others.

also for the really strong mutators like the one removed (''Extra T2, T3 slots mutator has been removed.'') maybe the solution is making compromises, and introducing a new kind of mutators that give you one thing in exchanging of taking something else, for example that mutator becomes ''You get extra T2 and T3 slots, you now need 100 more ticks to evolve to the next caste''.

[edgardo]

what you did on the last update was perfect, cause people mostly spammed one type of the mutators instand of picking one of each, also the faster weeds were needed, hardy weeds take atleast 3 hits from something that even have a bayonet.

[Boersgard]

Mutations have just become xeno++ power ramping

You might as well have just increased the stat gains from the aging system. Quite frankly this is all going the wrong direction. These mutations don't offer anything interesting, they don't change gameplay, they just make xenos the same but better.

We don't need power ramping xenos. They ought to be tough from the getgo without delay - maybe a very short 1 minute span after molting to go from young to mature - but otherwise tie age only to mutations, not stat powerups. Mutations should be specializations or abilities, and probably best with trade-offs, not "I want to buff everything, have my cake and eat it too." In general Mature xenos should be more dangerous than they are now, and elder/ancient just mature stat-line with more mutations, not extra stat bonuses.

Good mutations:
- Lunge distance increased 1 tile
- Fling has a small chance to break a bone or sends the target 1 tile further
- Sight range increased 1 tile
- Meson vision
- Seeing HP
- Faster special ability actions (e.g. ripping off limb, eating someone)
- Access to higher tier or different abilities (e.g. warrior starts with nothing at young, then chooses between punch/fling/etc. as he ages and expand the available ability options for him)

Tradeoffs:
- Lose an ability
- Slower
- Longer delay after lunge before you can move
- Less health
- Vision is hazy
- Shorter sight range

[LubedDwarf]

The problem is that "picking one of each" makes mutators more cheese than it ever was. There isn't enough mutation options for that to be viable, its just the same four. Allowing you to stack them allowed you to put a little more thought into what mutations you take. I just feel like the devs made a mistake with the last update. I would recommend allowing you to stack mutations again but make all mutations come with a downside like a decrease in speed for the more health or armor you take or becoming more fragile with each speed mutation taken.

[Boersgard]

The problem is that "picking one of each" makes mutators more cheese than it ever was. There isn't enough mutation options for that to be viable, its just the same four. Allowing you to stack them allowed you to put a little more thought into what mutations you take. I just feel like the devs made a mistake with the last update. I would recommend allowing you to stack mutations again but make all mutations come with a downside like a decrease in speed for the more health or armor you take or becoming more fragile with each speed mutation taken.

While in general I might agree with this - due to the way this game works mechanically, speed will always be better than more HP short of situations where a single M41 burst puts you in crit.

Speed
Stuns
DPS

These are the three things you have to manage very carefully mechanically. Something with a lot of HP will die quickly if it gets stunned or it can't run away, and fighting something with so much HP that PB shotguns do nothing doesn't feel fun or engaging at all. It's not interesting for either player involved in the combat situation because there's no risk/reward involved. You can make mistakes freely. The game is more fun when marines are dangerous to xenos and xenos are dangerous to marines.

[JJG]

Mutations have just become xeno++ power ramping

You might as well have just increased the stat gains from the aging system. Quite frankly this is all going the wrong direction. These mutations don't offer anything interesting, they don't change gameplay, they just make xenos the same but better.

We don't need power ramping xenos. They ought to be tough from the getgo without delay - maybe a very short 1 minute span after molting to go from young to mature - but otherwise tie age only to mutations, not stat powerups. Mutations should be specializations or abilities, and probably best with trade-offs, not "I want to buff everything, have my cake and eat it too." In general Mature xenos should be more dangerous than they are now, and elder/ancient just mature stat-line with more mutations, not extra stat bonuses.

Good mutations:
- Lunge distance increased 1 tile
- Fling has a small chance to break a bone or sends the target 1 tile further
- Sight range increased 1 tile
- Meson vision
- Seeing HP
- Faster special ability actions (e.g. ripping off limb, eating someone)
- Access to higher tier or different abilities (e.g. warrior starts with nothing at young, then chooses between punch/fling/etc. as he ages and expand the available ability options for him)

Tradeoffs:
- Lose an ability
- Slower
- Longer delay after lunge before you can move
- Less health
- Vision is hazy
- Shorter sight range

This guy gets it.
Also for the crusher:
First three mutators to choose from when reaching mature.
#1. Shorter run up for charge.
#2. Higher Top Speed.
#3. Crest armor becomes stronger.

Second set of mutators to choose from when reaching elder.
#1. Increase vision by 4 tiles. (Very useful for a crusher)
#2. More damage on charge even with less speed
#3. Increase stomp duration

At ancient just give a flat bonus to whatever mutators were chosen. So if you took the Increased Vision than your vision increases further to 8 tiles.
If you can't come up with 9 unique bonuses to give to classes than just go with 6 instead.

Also, these choices need to disappear after not taking them, otherwise, the choices become much less meaningful.

[NethIafins]

Current changes are more of a damage control

More fun mutators are in the work by ThePiachu

[KennyTGuy]

Current changes are more of a damage control

More fun mutators are in the work by ThePiachu

Sounds good! Have your design philosophies changed from pure buffs to sidegrades? Or will they be more fun but unmistakably still overall increases in xeno power?

[ThePiachu]

To reiterate - stat boosts were the potatoes of the mutator world - a filler that is easy to put in. Now that we have the baseline and everyone has at least a few things to pick from, we can work on the meat - mutators for individual castes and ones that are more complicated. For example, I have a Queen individual mutator planned that will make her lay more eggs. Not something you need every round, but if you happen to have two or more Carriers, this will augment that strategy.

[Build_R_]

The future mutators sound pretty nice so far, it's nice to see xenos have a little bit of personalisation in their gameplay!

[HKO20006]

Does speed mutator allow crusher to reach crushing speed quicker? Does speed mutator increase crusher's max crushing speed?

[GenericUsername]

I understand that mutators at the moment are just here to prove a concept, but I think it should be considered to nerf or remove multi bursts or maturing stat boosts.
Also I think the speed boosts should be removed, armor and attack are ok, but not being able to hit xenos is broken. Leave speed as it is.

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

Does speed mutator allow crusher to reach crushing speed quicker? Does speed mutator increase crusher's max crushing speed?

It mutates Crusher's max charging speed.

[Norwest]

To reiterate - stat boosts were the potatoes of the mutator world - a filler that is easy to put in. Now that we have the baseline and everyone has at least a few things to pick from, we can work on the meat - mutators for individual castes and ones that are more complicated. For example, I have a Queen individual mutator planned that will make her lay more eggs. Not something you need every round, but if you happen to have two or more Carriers, this will augment that strategy.

Current changes are more of a damage control

More fun mutators are in the work by ThePiachu

In an effort to provide some feedback, here are my 'on-the-ground' observations from a few games today:
1. Evacs occurred at approximately 12:50, 13:15, and 12:56. No holdouts on the Almayer were successful, and all games were complete before 14:00 (one by about 13:15, lol).
2. Xenos numbers varied from 15 to 30, with most larvae that I could see being inhabited by ghosts. I can't speak for all rounds, since I was playing for much of them, but I didn't see a boatload of SSD larva lying around at least.
3. Marine pushes were much more cautious than prior to the mutators rollout: Marines pushed cautiously, and retreated early. No large-scale counterattacks were attempted. As an Engineer this wasn't too bad for me, but I imagine that more combat-oriented players would've been annoyed had the games gone on much longer (mind you, though, the xenos won too quickly for this to be a problem at the time).
4. In two out of three games, xenos attacks seemed fairly sloppy and uncoordinated (no massed hit-and-fade strikes on a Marine defensive line, the queen didn't de-ovi, no coordination with boiler gas strikes, etc.). Despite this, they enjoyed considerable success and managed to rapidly overwhelm Marine groundside defenses in both cases.
5. I noticed the actual in-game effects of mutators several times. Here's two extreme examples, to try and set the tone: in one case, a Runner was able to travel ludicrously fast when trying to pick me off. I noticed the mutator effect but didn't mind it, since a) Runners are already stupidly fast, and b) I could still combat it normally. In another case, though, a Defender rested on weeds while I was shooting it. Getting ignored like that - when the opponent has enough health reserves and regen that you simply don't matter - was frustrating to deal with.

On the whole, mutators served to make Marines excessively cautious. They stayed strongly defensive, and attempted to 'turtle' in order to survive the initial xenos attacks. This static style of gameplay might've been a problem if they /stayed/ that way, but the Marines were overrun so rapidly that it didn't matter; that being said, on the whole I'd argue that making every map into an Ice Colony standoff would not be much fun. Sloppy xenos attacks generally succeeded (as measured by attrition rates on both sides), and while it wasn't the culprit every time, I think some of those cases could be pinned on the effects of mutators rather than other confounding factors (Marine mistakes, RNGesus, lucky timing, etc.). While the games were less ridiculously one-sided than a day or two ago (thank you for rolling out updates quickly, by the way), they were still pretty un-fun to play.

I'm sorry that I don't have any clear answers for how to fix these issues, although I would agree that mutators seem like they'd work better as "sidegrades" rather than straight-up upgrades - there's already maturation to upgrade xenos over time, after all. I would suggest going with your plan of having clear tradeoffs for xenos mutations, and would ask for some method of recognizing a particular mutation on the battlefield. If I could see that a xenos was particularly strong or fast, and knew that they'd taken some penalty in order to achieve it, I'd be much less annoyed when that particular stat - speed, health, damage, etc. - turned out to be so ludicrously high in practice.

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

In an effort to provide some feedback, here are my 'on-the-ground' observations from a few games today:
1. Evacs occurred at approximately 12:50, 13:15, and 12:56. No holdouts on the Almayer were successful, and all games were complete before 14:00 (one by about 13:15, lol).
2. Xenos numbers varied from 15 to 30, with most larvae that I could see being inhabited by ghosts. I can't speak for all rounds, since I was playing for much of them, but I didn't see a boatload of SSD larva lying around at least.
3. Marine pushes were much more cautious than prior to the mutators rollout: Marines pushed cautiously, and retreated early. No large-scale counterattacks were attempted. As an Engineer this wasn't too bad for me, but I imagine that more combat-oriented players would've been annoyed had the games gone on much longer (mind you, though, the xenos won too quickly for this to be a problem at the time).
4. In two out of three games, xenos attacks seemed fairly sloppy and uncoordinated (no massed hit-and-fade strikes on a Marine defensive line, the queen didn't de-ovi, no coordination with boiler gas strikes, etc.). Despite this, they enjoyed considerable success and managed to rapidly overwhelm Marine groundside defenses in both cases.
5. I noticed the actual in-game effects of mutators several times. Here's two extreme examples, to try and set the tone: in one case, a Runner was able to travel ludicrously fast when trying to pick me off. I noticed the mutator effect but didn't mind it, since a) Runners are already stupidly fast, and b) I could still combat it normally. In another case, though, a Defender rested on weeds while I was shooting it. Getting ignored like that - when the opponent has enough health reserves and regen that you simply don't matter - was frustrating to deal with.

On the whole, mutators served to make Marines excessively cautious. They stayed strongly defensive, and attempted to 'turtle' in order to survive the initial xenos attacks. This static style of gameplay might've been a problem if they /stayed/ that way, but the Marines were overrun so rapidly that it didn't matter; that being said, on the whole I'd argue that making every map into an Ice Colony standoff would not be much fun. Sloppy xenos attacks generally succeeded (as measured by attrition rates on both sides), and while it wasn't the culprit every time, I think some of those cases could be pinned on the effects of mutators rather than other confounding factors (Marine mistakes, RNGesus, lucky timing, etc.). While the games were less ridiculously one-sided than a day or two ago (thank you for rolling out updates quickly, by the way), they were still pretty un-fun to play.

I'm sorry that I don't have any clear answers for how to fix these issues, although I would agree that mutators seem like they'd work better as "sidegrades" rather than straight-up upgrades - there's already maturation to upgrade xenos over time, after all. I would suggest going with your plan of having clear tradeoffs for xenos mutations, and would ask for some method of recognizing a particular mutation on the battlefield. If I could see that a xenos was particularly strong or fast, and knew that they'd taken some penalty in order to achieve it, I'd be much less annoyed when that particular stat - speed, health, damage, etc. - turned out to be so ludicrously high in practice.

Dude, there have been 3 victories since the mutator patch hits (before the latest nerf btw). 1 with Carson as a legitimate planetside win on Prison, 1 with Malik as a shipside win on Prison, and another shipside win thanks to xeno crashing in brig

[kastion]

I played a round this morning where I was queen on big red. I took plasma, then leaders, then muturation in that order to pick the shittiest things I could (literally took maturation when we were attacking the alamayer). We rolled the marines. There were 45 of us within like 30 minutes of the game starting. Mutators dont even matter when there are 45 xenos. I was trolling and destroyed everyone. I let everyone evolve to whatever they wanted, I didnt even care that people were dying because no matter how many we lost we stayed above 40 the entire time. I dont know how yall dont see that the number of xenos is whats causing the problems.

[Norwest]

I played a round this morning where I was queen on big red. I took plasma, then leaders, then muturation in that order to pick the shittiest things I could (literally took maturation when we were attacking the alamayer). We rolled the marines. There were 45 of us within like 30 minutes of the game starting. Mutators dont even matter when there are 45 xenos. I was trolling and destroyed everyone. I let everyone evolve to whatever they wanted, I didnt even care that people were dying because no matter how many we lost we stayed above 40 the entire time. I dont know how yall dont see that the number of xenos is whats causing the problems.

Heh. Aye, a single infected person bursting into seven or eight larva is fairly ridiculous. If that was cut down to reasonable numbers, lower total numbers of xenos would certainly help offset the increased per-player capability of xenos. My issue with that as a solution, though, is that it keeps more players out of the round. Having more xenos, with each one individually less capable, might be more fun for more people.

[kastion]

Heh. Aye, a single infected person bursting into seven or eight larva is fairly ridiculous. If that was cut down to reasonable numbers, lower total numbers of xenos would certainly help offset the increased per-player capability of xenos. My issue with that as a solution, though, is that it keeps more players out of the round. Having more xenos, with each one individually less capable, might be more fun for more people.

Most of the new xenos are marine players that just want to try the new shiny or are pussies that cant stand losing so they jump ship. Almost none of the xeno mains have come back, I can tell by how bad the xeno players are. Eventually it will even out on its own and those xeno players will go back to playing marines more often.

I would gladly revert tackle changes and larva changes and so would most players, but for some reason devs don't want to. I hate rng and everything about xenos has to be rng for some reason.

[KingKire]

Thoughts on mutator sidegrades, with a non-mutated xeno being the default solid evolution?

Possibly have mutations be a time evolution thing? where a xeno gets 1 point every few minutes, and they can swap out evolutions? Instead of a static evolution, xeno can be more able to adapt on the fly as time wears on? a xeno gets 1 mutation choice, but could essentially swap out the mutation choice every 30 minutes.

More speed = less health

more armor = less speed, or less health.

more plasma storage = less health regen.

Increased nerotoxicity spit, means less damaging acid spit.

If theres any stat mutations, they should pull back on something else

Pick a pro, pick a con to go with it. Thats how usualy stat rpg's work.

Increased boiler cloud size, means less overall damaging clouds

smaller boiler cloud, means more concentrated death balls.

Stronger spit, costs more plasma

Weaker spit, costs less plasma

Faster growing weeds, cost more plasma to lay down. or slow people less.

[kastion]

I just don't see the point of side grades. I cant think of any time I would take less armor or health to boost speed some. The only thing I could think of is going like full support on drone or hivelord or maybe praetorian and just nuking your combat stats to have better support stuff. Other than that you need every stat for combat especially for anyone that goes into melee fighting.

Like I wouldn't trade 1 speed for 1 armor. I might trade 2 speed for 1 armor or something where I am overall stronger, but I wouldn't just swap my stats around and become some glass cannon or something that's just dumb.

Although it would be funny if you could go extreme stat modification anyway you want. I would dump all my damage as a runner and put it all into health then just tackle marines and drag tehm to other aliens to kill them. I would be unstoppable.

[kastion]

What about adding the ability to take a negative mutation like lose speed and you get 6 points to spend on other mutations. You would have to allow stacking then or it would be useless and also plasma cant be chooseable cause everyone would get rid of plasma lol.

you could also really change us castes by like giving drones the option to lose their building abilities to gain like carrier type abilities so they can be offensive drones instead of support drones. Theres like endless possibilities.

[KingKire]

Side grades are the flavor that make a game in a state of perfect balanced "unbalanced". Its what makes games like Starcraft/tf2/ Lol, shine as games. Its what i think CM13 should strive for as well. Its the state of you know that if you just had "x" or "y", you'd be unstoppable, but theres just that nagging "z" that keeps it in check.

You may not want to take less armor/health to boost speed, but you may want to have less armor/health to boost speed and give you a longer pounce to go with it. Your taking a negative in one area to gain a stronger positive in another area.

The most important part of a balanced unbalance, is that the positives cant always be directly connected with the negatives. An apples to diamonds sort of situation. Some people may really want faster build times as a drone, but there gonna lose something else, maybe they cant move as fast or they have weaker claws. Not necessarily a bad thing for a drone who wants to build faster, but a clear negative to a drone whos looking for a more mixed playstyle. Its also important that the sidegrade doesnt overpower the "meta". Sure drones can upgrade to carry an egg sack, but how much does that take away from the carrier?

Not to say that its a bad idea, in fact, it might be interesting seeing an entire hive filled with carrier drones. But there has to be a balancing point. now im just ranting i guess. Anywho, pluses with negatives, apples and diamonds. Stat sticks are nice but so are unique buffs. Who knows, maybe have negatives mixed with positives. Runners get more damage when theyre on fire, but...you know, theyre still on fire and getting injured.